MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING RESEARCH 303
organizational structure, context and control to get some sense of the fit of these
organizational variables and the JIT system. Drawing from Drazin and Van de
Ven’s (1985) review of the extensive contingency literature, Seltoet al.(1995) found
contingency theory to have intuitive appeal in understanding broad issues of
management controls, but also argued that the extensive interaction of variables
as well as continuous changes in organizations would make it difficult to apply
contingency theory.
The influence of contingency theory and its precursor theoretical traditions on
managerial accounting research, however, have been criticized for presenting a
deterministic, ahistorical view of organizations which provides limited insight as to
the mediating processes of organizations. Among the earlier critiques of the appli-
cation of contingency theory in managerial accounting, Otley (1980) observed that
reliance tended to be placed on a relatively few number of very general variables,
task environment and structure, which, in turn, were used to explain organization
structure and design of managerial accounting systems. He argued that these
variables tended to be ill-defined and measured, and were not comparable across
earlier accounting studies, thus yielding fragmented results. Further, the proposal
that the link between accounting systems design and organizational effectiveness
was far from proven, Otley (1980) concluded that there remained a need to imbed
accounting systems in the overall package of organizational control approaches,
to develop more nuanced expressions of organizational effectiveness, and in gen-
eral to move to a more complex expression of the contingency framework. Also,
he observed that many of the issues relating to the development of accounting
systems, and the relationships with the organization’s differentiated environment,
were political as opposed to technical in nature, and urged the application of a
field study approach to examine these issues.
Interpretive perspectives
By focusing on the management of complex relational networks and the exercise of
coordination and control, contingency theory has adhered to the strong influence
of the classical sociological functionalist perspectives (Durkheim 1938) at the
cost of neglecting alternative sociological theories such as expressed in the work
of Weber (1947, 1958, 1964) whose primary concern was with the source of
formal structure: the legitimacy of rationalized formal structures. In contingency
theory, legitimacy is given; assertions about bureaucratization such as the role of
managerial accounting practices and information systems rest on the assumptions
of norms of rationality. When such norms do play causal roles in theories of
bureaucratization, it is because they are thought to be built into modern societies
and organizations as very general values, which are thought to facilitate formal
organization. But norms of rationality are not simply general values. They exist
in much more specific and powerful ways in the rules, understandings and
meanings attached to institutionalized social structures. The causal importance of
such institutions has been neglected. According to Meyer and Rowan (1977, 343):